Before You Have the Metrics...You Need a Plan

This is one of the several questions you should be asking as part of planning your implementation. Like any change, the conversion to a service desk should be driven by a business case. Invest time with stakeholders (management, the team that will be using the new system, their customers, the IT team that will be supporting them) to create a detailed plan. This plan should not only include the steps for implementation (including a plan to train the people who will be using the new system), it should also capture the state of the team’s processes prior to the change. It should articulate the reasons that the change is being implemented (not just because there’s a cool new tool out there) and it should define what success would look like.

Round and Round We Go

If you’re bringing non-tech business teams like Finance, HR and Marketing into a service desk model for the first time, it’s important to make it clear that this is an iterative process. The initial conversion will, of course, be the biggest change. However, you’ll follow-up your implementation by checking your results against the definition of success you had previously defined, by reviewing what went as expected and what didn’t and by identifying things you’d still like to improve - which is to say you’ll do a retrospective. You’ll debate and communicate these results, including a comparison of the actual results to the anticipated results, and use this information to set priorities for your next iteration. Understanding that service management is an iterative, continually improving process will help reduce fear for business teams that are converting to a service desk for the first time.

Once a team is in a regular cycle of planning, implementing, doing a retrospective, sharing the results and then planning again, they’ll be more easily able to identify their successes (and rejoice in watching former pain points fall away with each new iteration) and set their goals for the future. Along with streamlining processes, this is one of the biggest advantages of using a tool like JIRA Service Desk. Business teams such as HR and Operations can be overwhelmed with requests for small, repeated processes that take up a lot of time. Being able to see those processes, to know how often their requested and how much time they take will allow leadership to continually improve efficiencies.

Going from zero to fully using a service desk with all of those great metrics can seem like a big leap. Let your business team know that it’s not one big leap. It’s a lot of little jumps. And once they have the tools up and running they’ll be able to see and show others just how much they do.